I’ve recently started waking up every morning with a thought of thankfulness. Taking a few moments before I begin my day, to think of a few things that I can be truly thankful for, sets me on a bouyant path, out of the right side of my bed and into the day. It’s a simple thing, but so easy to forget. Gratitude is a tremendously powerful force that aligns us with an attitude of celebration, openess, spaciousness. Thank you world! Thank you friends! Thank you animals! Thank you enemies! Thank you trouble makers, thorns in the side, the people who drive you crazy – or do they drive you sane? The choice is yours. If you come from a position of gratitude, even the difficult aspects of our lives reveal themselves to be the gifts they actually are. There is nothing, not one thing that happens to us, that can not be transformed into an opportunity for further awakening. Awakening never stops, we’re never done, new offerings for growth will always be there for us, should we choose to accept them.

A Fierce Light warrior moves through the world in an attitude of celebration, thankful for this precious human birth, thankful for the opportunity to be of service, thankful for the opportunity to play, to cry, to laugh, to be delighted or dismayed – to experience everything in the light of full and awakened consciousness. This isn’t as daunting as it sounds – it’s actually our natural state of being and doing. The unnatural mode of existence is that which has been foistered onto us by lifetimes of cultural programming designed to disconnect us from our origins. We don’t actually need to gain anything to become celebrants of life. We just need to lose the thick layer of disconnection, of fear, of distrust of life, of love, of existence.

Yes, the world itself is constantly throwing curveballs at us all, every step of the way, but if we stop for a moment or two, we might notice that a great majority of the problems we encounter, are mirrors of the internal work still to be done, the soul changing work, the transformative work, waiting to blossom. Even the larger problems, that might seem distant and out of our control – the environmental issues, global warming, species extinction, the economic crisis, war – all of these are also tied into our own consciousness. Most of the problems we are facing are man made – and in this case the gender bias is pretty darn accurate – but we’re all responsible, men and women. We all have some evolving to do to get out of the mind set that created these problems in the first place. Einstein famously said that we cannot solve problems in the same mindset they were created in.

So we need to step into a new paradigm in order to break free of the paradigms that are so clearly no longer working. One of the biggies that plagues us all is greed. We have been trained to feel a sense of lack in our society – if only we had this, if only we had that, then we’d be happy. We constantly defer our happiness until some future arrives…but what if it never does? Maybe we should just start being happy right now, with what we have, in an attitude of profound gratitude. The universe has given us exactly what we need for our souls growth. We have summoned the conditions in our lives. The thorns are there to show us the work we still need to do. The flowers are there as reminders – don’t forget to smell the roses! And to look for them. Always look for those small and tender shoots of new growth. Those small and tender offerings of possibility. They are always there to be found.

As I am writing, a swan just flew above the lake, a startling white against the cool green of the ice. Thank you swan. You are gorgeous.